


Always

by italktoomuch



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 14:34:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4839056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/italktoomuch/pseuds/italktoomuch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Mockingjay, fluffy Everlark in which an injured Katniss only wants Peeta to make it better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always

Always…

“Shit.”

My curse bites through my clenched teeth, hissing around the woods as pain sears through my shoulder. I knew I landed funny, though I couldn’t tell exactly how that was, or how I wound up in the position I am now; hand clamped firmly over my throbbing shoulder, holding it protectively in a place I’m sure it shouldn’t even be, but definitely not wanting to move it for fear for making it worse, my knees at my chest and my eyes burning through the rock that had caught my foot.

Tears sting at my eyes like the fire under my hand and I bite down on my lip. I have to get home. My feet are fine, I remind myself, my feet are fine, I repeat in my head as I work up to standing. I’ll have to be quick.

I stumble off balance and take twice as long as I normally would even with my desperation to get back, gingerly holding my arm to the rest of my body on my way. I feel cold but for my burning shoulder, and when I start to shiver I have to bite the inside of my cheek to stop from whimpering as I pass through town. I don’t want any of their well-intentioned worry. Instead I keep my head down and my hand falls to my elbow as if only sheltering myself from the cold while making my way directly to our home.

By the time I reach the front door, and find it locked, I want to sink to my knees on the doorstep and cry. I could shout, but that would raise the attention of at least Haymitch, and I don’t want that. I don’t want anyone, I just want him.

So I take a deep breath, bite on my lip and squeeze my eyes shut before I take my good hand from my, now not-so-good arm, and pound on the door.

Everything screams in protest; my broken shoulder yelping with another wave of pain each time my fist hits the door, my fist, freezing fingers that are not quite numb, shoot bolts of fire with each hit. Open the God-damned door.

I nearly stumble through it when he swings it open, my fist colliding with the air and thankfully, not his face.

My eyes break open, tears spilling from them before I look up to him.

“Katniss, are you - ?”

I step inside, huddling my limp arm to my chest again. My game bag falls lamely to my feet as he clicks the door closed behind me.

My head drops into his chest and I finally cry with the pain. “Make it go away, Peeta…” I whisper hoarsely, though he hasn’t the faintest idea what I’m talking about.

His lips brush my head lightly, so very carefully I don’t even think he nudged a hair out of place

My feet are just fine, I remind myself, but I’m finding that I do not, and cannot, move from my spot.

“You’re trembling… and you’re as white as a sheet, God,” he breathes to my hair.

“Shoulder!” I warn, only managing a word, forced and rushed, his arms drifting quickly to my waist as they wrap around me lightly.

“Okay, it’s okay.” I relish in a fleeting moment of peace as I exhale a long breath. I whimper into him, the peace forgotten and the pain resurging through me, my right hand balling his shirt until I feel my knuckles turn white.

The next I know he has me scooped off of the floor and I am hovering easily to our living room, his arms warm and strong and gentle.

Carefully, he settles me into the couch, but still I wince at the movement, and I feel bad for doing so because he was so kind, so gentle. He gives me a small smile, a squeeze of my leg and he rises. I bite my lip and let a sob shudder through my chest, and then mostly silence it as it crosses my lips in a strangled cry.

“Katniss.”

He stands above me, a blanket in one hand. I nod. It envelops around me, and he tucks me into the couch like a child going to bed, over my legs and halfway up my stomach, making sure he pushes the edges down.

His blue eyes look up and meet mine, no question in them, just a look I have grown to know as love. One I am sure I mirror back to him. Though not today, not now, my face contorted with pain and I can’t remedy it.

“I’ll be right back.”

His voice is soft and I don’t have time to answer him before he darts into the kitchen. When he returns my eyes are closed and I am trying to forget I even have a left shoulder.

“Katniss?”

They flash open, I remind myself not to make any sudden movement, though I inhale sharply with every slight motion, sending more bolts of pain stabbing up and down my arm.

His fingers reach for my shirt and I let him peel it from me, revealing purple and swelling. Quickly, he presses a pack of ice to it. I squeak.

“Sorry.”

“S… S’okay.” I manage.

His hand other hand cups my face, his thumb carefully stroking my cheek. My eyes flutter closed and I pucker my lips enough to brush them against his palm. I feel like a child, injured from running too fast, playing too eagerly. Small and in need of reassurance. I am reminded of my mother doing this to me before my father died. When I trusted her to fix everything with some “magic” water and a gentle kiss. I feel like a child, and I feel safe.

“Thank you.”

His face softens and his lips press firmly on my forehead. “Katniss, I think you’re gonna need to go to the hospital.”

I want to protest, to say that I am fine, I will be fine, but I know I am not. I nod lightly. “Okay.”

*

It’s dislocated. And badly so. They twist and pull while I cry out into Peeta’s shirt, his arm wrapping around and holding my head to him, stroking my hair while I inflict the same damage to the back of his shirt. I don’t do well with morphling, not anymore, and I don’t like to expose myself to it when I can avoid it. But fucking shit balls, it hurts.

“You should get some rest, Mrs Mellark. We’ll operate in the morning.”

Operate in the morning.

Peeta stays, neither of us can sleep well without the other. He pulls the side chair as close to the bed as he can. I want to hold him, but my left arm has been strapped against my chest and I scowl at it for not allowing me to let him know how much I appreciate him. I huff once more at the bandages and then settle to having them there if it means I can get back to normal quicker. It still throbs, but not nearly as much as before.

His fingers lace through mine and I look to him. I had asked him into climb into the bed with me, but he knows he can grip too tight in the depths of a nightmare and he grimaces at the thought of hurting me further, insisting on the awkward armchair beside the bed.

“Goodnight, Katniss.” He brings my hand to his lips, soft and warm on the back of my knuckles.

“I love you,” I reply with a squeeze of his hand.

“I love you.”

*

I’m barely awake for long before I am no longer conscious again. I wake briefly, register that I am hungry and I still ache. And I am anxious. Peeta talks soothingly to me, I even smile, and before they make him leave I pull his head easily down to mine and connect our lips. His sweet and musky scent lingers as he leaves to the waiting room. The anaesthetist talks to me but I don’t know what she says, I am sure I wouldn’t remember anyway. I focus on Peeta, imagining him with me here still, and I hope that my last thought before being plunged into unconsciousness is of him.

I always do. Always.

*

In the twilight of morphling, Peeta whispers the word and I go searching for him. It’s a gauzy, violet-tinted world, with no hard edges, and many places to hide. I push through cloud banks, follow faint tracks, catch the scent of cinnamon, of dill. Once I feel his hand on my cheek and try to trap it, but it dissolves like mist through my fingers.

I’ve had this dream before.

That is the first thing I think as my head pulls me back to the surface. This very dream, clouded and held down by morphling, now ebbing from me enough to bring my head back to consciousness.

My eyes are heavy, too heavy, that I don’t try to open them completely, feebly blinking in snapshots of light. That’s all I can gather of my surroundings: white. And bright.

My head feels woozy and warm – fuzzy. Definitely morphling. And faintly, I think I can feel his warm hand still on my cheek from my dream.

My own hand, heavy on the end of an even heavier arm, lifts slowly up and I copy my dream self, reaching to trap this feeling, real or not, to my cheek. Unlike the dream, my hand does meet his and he makes every effort not to fade away.

“Katniss…” he whispers to the room, sighing my name and drawing out the word in a way that washes over me in a sea of calm.

My fingers grasp at his knuckles and I press him firmly to my cheek, my eyes now determined to be prized open. I squint and grimace at the brightness, but I need to see him.

“P..Mpeeta.”

My lips, uncooperative and dry, manage to force the words from my mouth in a mumble as I catch sight of his unruly, blond hair and clear, bright – relieved – eyes.

I push myself upright on the bed, one handed, with my left arm strapped back across my chest. Peeta helps, fusses with my pillows and then finally settles back down on his chair.

“Hey,” he says softly, a smile dancing across his face.

“Hey.” My tone matches his, as does my small smile, as I echo his greeting.

“How are you feeling? I think most of the morphling will have worn off by now – don’t worry, I told them you don’t like having it after… everything. They said they’d switch to something else once this lot wears off.”

It’s a simple gesture, one that isn’t overly passionate or overly anything. Sweet and innocent. And it lodges itself in my throat, dissolving throughout my being. Just that he knows, the thought fills me with a warm glow and a buzz of butterflies at my navel.

Of course he would know and of course he would say to them on my behalf. And the love from which it stemmed wraps around me as my arm reaches out to him as if to extend my own love to him.

It’s not that he doesn’t show or tell me he loves me; he more than lets me know each and every day from the note he leaves every morning before heading to the bakery, to the way his lips trail my body in our bed at night. It’s the innocence and the simplicity of the way he cares that always catches me. That, and probably the remaining effects of the morphling.

I make room on the bed and he perches on the edge, tangling our arms together and knotting our fingers at the end. He brushes a strand of hair from my eye, his hand cupping my cheek briefly once more before his lips finally press to mine. They are soft and warm and move with mine like honey. I don’t want it to stop; I never do. But it does – too short and unbelievably sweet.

“So how are you feeling?”

I smirk. “Better now, thanks Doctor.”

Peeta snorts and kisses my hair.

“Good. You want me to get someone?”

I shake my head. “Just… stay with me?” I yawn, suddenly realizing the pull of the morphing again. I try to fight against it, wanting to stay with Peeta in consciousness. I don’t want the purple, gauzy world, I want this world, here with him – irrational and unachievable, like a child’s wish, against the weight of the morphing, dragging me down and anchoring me under its control. I can hear his heart beating with my ear pressed to his chest and his breaths rock me steadily like a lullaby and I know I am a goner.

But I cling on long enough to hear him breathe his reply to my hair, untainted and clear, before I finally have to succumb to the not real world.

“Always.”


End file.
